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“I’ve worked twelve-hour shifts for the past five days. Actually, it’s my first night off since I took the job.”
“Are they ganging up on the new guy?” She smiled and her dimples winked at him.
“No, they’ve been so shorthanded that the other doctors haven’t had much time off in a while.”
She was quiet for a moment and he could see the wheels turning in her mind. She glanced at her hands, which were in her lap, before looking back at him.
“Why didn’t you take the job at first?” she asked. “Because they did offer it to you, didn’t they? Please, tell me you didn’t decline because of what happened between us.”
A pretty shade of pink bloomed on her cheeks.
“Wait, don’t answer that,” she said. “It’s a dumb question. Of course you didn’t turn down a job because of me. It’s just that I tried to get in touch with you after I found out I was pregnant, but all the hospital would tell me was that you didn’t work there.”
He nodded. So she’d tried to find him. He wondered if she’d been discreet when she was doing her detective work. No one had told him that a woman claiming to be carrying his child had been there looking for him. Then again, how would an employer break that news to a new hire? And would she really have told a complete stranger why she was looking for him? Not likely.
“I couldn’t justify relocating on the first offer,” he said. “But I could work with their counteroffer. So, just in case you were still wondering, no, my turning it down had nothing to do with you or what happened between us.”
“I didn’t even know your last name,” she said.
Exactly. They hadn’t exchanged much personal information beyond first names. He’d thought that was the way she’d wanted it, and it had made their meeting sexy and exciting.
“So, I take it you’re keeping the baby.”
“Of course I am. I have a good job. This place isn’t a palace, but it’s big enough for a child and me.”
They sat in silence for a moment. The furnace ticked and then clicked on. A car honked somewhere outside.
“Look,” she finally said, “I won’t try to force you to be part of this child’s life. We will be perfectly fine on our own. I just thought you should know.”
“Would you be willing to take a paternity test?”
“Excuse me?”
“A paternity test. Would you take one?”
Her mouth opened and shut before she could utter a word.
It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but the way she glared at him made it seem as if he’d asked her to move to Mars. The look in her eyes cut him deeply.
But he couldn’t go there. Or rather, he couldn’t let her work her way into that soft spot where instinct and feelings lived and eclipsed common sense. Instinct and feelings had never served him well. That’s how they’d gotten themselves into this mess in the first place. He made a mental note not to call the pregnancy—or the baby—a mess. If she was reacting this way to a paternity test, she’d probably smack him if he called the situation a mess.
It was all so new that the pregnancy and baby didn’t seem as if they were one and the same. That his child might be growing inside Becca...
The thought hit him like a punch in the gut. He would not make a good father. He was married to his job. Children were too unpredictable. They were too fragile. He knew for a fact he did not do well with unpredictable and fragile. He’d learned the hard way. The ER was a different type of unpredictable. It was based in science and methodical procedure. He never knew what he’d get one night to the next in the ER, but no matter what was thrown at him, he could follow procedure and tame the chaos. He could fix people.
But being a father? Raising a child? God help him. Or more accurate, God help the poor child.
That’s as far as he could go right now.
He simply couldn’t wrap his mind around it. But there was no sense in getting shell-shocked until he had the facts in hand.
He knew he sounded like a first-class jerk, but the sad truth was he wouldn’t be able to wrap his mind around the pregnancy until he was certain the baby was his.
Yes, she was three months pregnant. Yes, he’d slept with her twelve weeks ago. But they’d been together one night. He didn’t know her or how many guys she’d slept with or when she’d slept with them. Even though he didn’t want to believe she’d try to saddle him with another man’s kid.
But he didn’t really know her. Because of this, he reminded himself, it wasn’t out of line to ask for proof that he was the father.
“We used a condom,” he said. “I just don’t see how this could’ve happened.”
She squinted at him and did a little head jut.
“Hello, you’re a doctor. You, of all people, should know that condoms aren’t one hundred percent fail-safe.”
He shrugged. “You’re right. They aren’t foolproof. But they do prevent pregnancy most of the time. I need a paternity test for my own peace of mind. It’s not you, it’s me. When you get the test and the results come back, you can tell me I’m a jackass and say I told you so as many times as you want.”
She scoffed and shook her head, obviously disgusted with him.
“Becca, don’t be mad, please.”
“I’m not mad at you. Because even though I don’t sleep around, Nick—before you, I’d never had a one-night stand, and after I got the news, I wished I never had—you couldn’t possibly know me well enough to know that. So I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for sleeping with a man who doesn’t know me well enough to know that.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_400fc7d4-8b56-57d3-8f33-c2ac2ade7232)
Just as Nick had maintained that he was within his right to ask Becca to take the paternity test, she was justified in feeling offended and irritated by his request.
However, the all-too-rational part of Becca’s brain knew without a doubt how the results would come back. It would prove that Nick was the father. So, why argue?
Why?
Insult and exasperation kicked up again. Do the words it’s the principle of the matter not mean anything to you?
Her heart had broken a little bit after Nick’s visit. Still tender, it tried to overrule that sickeningly reasonable voice in her brain.
She didn’t have to take the test if she didn’t want to. He wasn’t strong-arming her. She didn’t need to prove herself. But wouldn’t it look as if she had something to hide if she held out? The truth would set her free.
Or would it?
Handing Nick proof positive would not guarantee he’d be any happier about it than he was right now. But that was the chance she’d have to take. She’d meant it when she’d told him she wouldn’t try to force him into anything he didn’t want to do. And she wouldn’t.
In the end, vindication trumped justification. The next day she went to the lab in Dallas that Nick had recommended and let them draw blood for a noninvasive prenatal paternity test. They told her they’d have the results back in two business days.
After the longest two days of her life, Becca braced herself for the news. She wasn’t sure why she was anxious, since the results wouldn’t be a surprise. But last night she’d dreamed that the lab had gotten her results mixed up with another person’s, and she couldn’t seem to make Nick understand that it was a mistake. That the lab had messed up.
All her life Becca, who’d been a straight-A student up through college, had had recurring nightmares of failing tests. They’d only served as incentive to work harder. But this test was out of her control.
As she took the parking garage elevator into the lobby of the Macintyre Enterprises building, she took a deep breath and tried to get in touch with her rational mind, which still seemed to be fast asleep this morning.
Her foolish, emotional, battered heart was not only wide-awake and beating like a cymbal-banging monkey, it had been making her do crazy things like check her email every fifteen minutes since five-thirty this morning. If her rational mind cared to show up, it would convince her that, much like pressing an elevator button repeatedly when waiting for a slow car, refreshing her email browser every fifteen minutes before the workaday world had poured their first cup of coffee was fruitless.
But sometimes exercises in futility were therapeutic.
She stepped off the garage elevator into the lobby and turned toward the bank of elevators that would carry her up to her office on the top floor of the building.
The Macintyre Foundation was housed in a twenty-five-story glass-and-chrome building in the heart of downtown Dallas. The Macintyre Family Foundation shared office space with Macintyre Enterprises, which belonged to Kate’s brother, Rob Macintyre. The foundation mostly served the community of Celebration, Texas, which was located about twenty minutes outside of downtown Dallas. But since Rob Macintyre owned the Dallas-based building, they couldn’t beat the cost of rent.
Every time Becca stepped into the massive glass-enclosed lobby, she looked up. She couldn’t help herself, even after all these years. The ceiling seemed to stretch miles above her head, reaching toward the heavens. All around a gentle green-tinted light filtered in. Even in the soft morning sunshine, it reflected off the chrome furniture, fixtures and giant fountain in the center of the atrium.
Everything about the space was sleek and polished, and this morning it felt particularly cold and fed her anxious nerves, which just proved she needed a hot beverage to warm her up, because there wasn’t anything cold about the Macintyre family. They did a lot of good for the Celebration community.
Becca tightened her cashmere scarf and turned up the collar on her red wool coat to stave off the chill that had worked its way into her bones. She’d worn her favorite gray tweed skirt and ivory cashmere sweater to bolster herself against the emotional day. The ensemble was soft and warm, a comfort outfit, if there was such a thing, even if it was fitting a little snug these days.
She took off her hat, smoothed her hair into place and waved good morning to Violet, the receptionist who tended the lobby concierge desk. Even though Violet was small, young and pretty and very feminine, she was the gatekeeper, and she took her job seriously. No one got past her unless they had an appointment or possessed a preapproved security badge. Nobody wanted to tangle with Violet.
The heels of Becca’s boots tapped a cadence on the marble floors. The sound seemed to carry and echo in the cavernous lobby. Today, all of her senses were heightened. Even so, she tried to walk a little more carefully to muffle the noise.
When Becca finally reached the twenty-fifth floor, the office was quiet. Kate, Rob and his wife, Pepper, who was in charge of the foundation’s community relations department, obviously hadn’t gotten to work yet. Becca was so early even their receptionist, Lisa, wasn’t there.
After Becca turned on the office lights, she made her way to the kitchenette, where she started a pot of coffee for the office and brewed herself a cup of herbal tea.
God, the coffee smelled good. It took every ounce of strength she possessed not to toss the tea—a spicy, fruity blend that Kate had brought in for Becca after she’d learned about the pregnancy and Becca’s subsequent caffeine sacrifice.
Caffeine wasn’t good for the baby. That was the only incentive she needed to fortify her willpower. She grabbed her caffeine-free infusion and headed straight to her office away from temptation. At least the insipid liquid was hot and had begun to take the edge off the chill she’d experienced as she drove into work.
Fall was one of Becca’s favorite seasons. She loved everything about it, from the pumpkins and the autumn leaves as they shrugged off the last vestiges of summer green and donned glorious harvest colors, to the nip in the air and the way the community seemed to come together even more at football games and festivals. Becca had decorated her office to set a festive mood. A garland of leaves and straw artfully woven together festooned her office door, and she had brought in her pumpkin-spice-scented candle. Before she sat down at her desk, she turned on her electric candle warmer.
She had a long to-do list to plow through today, lots to accomplish to make sure Celebration’s fourth annual Central Park tree-lighting ceremony, an event the foundation sponsored the day after Thanksgiving, went off perfectly. The event had become a beloved tradition for the Celebration community, and if Becca had it her way, she’d do her part to make it better and better every year.
But even that had to wait. Because the first thing she did after she booted up her computer was check her email to see if there was any word from the lab.
The tech had given her a password and told her that after she received the email alerting her that her test results were ready, she was to go to a website, enter the password and retrieve her exoneration.
He’d called it results, of course, not exoneration, but that’s how she’d come to think of it.
Of course, since it wasn’t even nine o’clock, the email hadn’t yet arrived. She took a fortifying sip of tea and uttered a silent prayer that they wouldn’t make her wait until the end of the day.
But wait—what if she’d miscalculated? Was today considered day two? Or was that tomorrow? The cymbal monkey kicked in again, and her heart virtually rattled at the thought. She didn’t know if she could bear to wait another twenty-four hours.
She minimized the screen of her inbox and pulled up the file for the tree-lighting ceremony. She had so much to do today that, really, she should have enough to keep her mind occupied. But as she read the bids from the professional tree decorators, her mind invariably drifted to Nick.
How would he act once he had proof positive that he was the baby’s father? Would he choose to be part of his child’s life? Would he believe that despite their night together she didn’t sleep around? Whatever he did, Becca fully intended to play the I-told-you-so card once she had the results in hand.
Nice. That’ll entice him to stay. It’ll make you very pleasant to be around.
She shook away the thought, clicked on her inbox and refreshed her browser again.
Still nothing.
So she picked up a red file folder that contained her notes for the ceremony.
“Good morning.” Becca looked up to see Kate, dressed in a smart black pantsuit, holding a cup of coffee and standing in the doorway of her office.
“Hey,” she said.
“Dare I ask?” Kate grimaced as if she were bracing for Becca to throw something at her. “Any news yet?”
Great. As if she needed any more nervous encouragement, but she knew Kate meant well. Becca didn’t have the heart to sigh and tell her to go away. And to take her coffee with her.
Instead, she mustered her sweetest smile.
“Not yet.”
Kate nodded, then took a sip from her mug. “Good coffee. You really are a saint for having it ready. Since you can’t drink it, you really don’t have to do that.”
Becca closed the red folder. “I don’t mind.” She sipped her tea as if to prove she didn’t need the high-octane fuel, and the fruity, spicy stuff served her much better.
“Come in for a minute.” Becca pointed toward the chair. “Sit, please. Talk to me. Distract me. Stop me from checking my email at the top of every minute.”
Becca happened to see the clock on the bottom right corner of her computer screen turn over to nine o’clock. So, she hit the refresh button once more.
“Okay, I did it again.” Becca held up both hands, palms forward in surrender. “Stop me, please.”
“Okay, Britney Spears. I wish there was some way I could rig your computer so that every time you check your email Britney would sing, ‘Oops!...I Did It Again.’ That would make you think twice, wouldn’t it?”
“And how,” Becca said.
“Of course, I could always come in here and sing to you every few minutes. A couple of rounds of Britney therapy will probably work like touching a hot stove. After you experience it, you just know better.”
Becca laughed. “Darn, I wish I would’ve brought in the karaoke machine. I knew I was forgetting something.”
“I’m happy to sing a cappella. That would probably have the biggest impact.”
“Do you make house calls?” Becca asked. “I could’ve used you last night.”
“Why? It was a little early to start the test result watch last night, wasn’t it?”
“No, it wasn’t that. I wasn’t actually looking, but I was anxious about it. To take my mind off things, I let myself binge-watch classic movies. Turner Classics was having a James Dean film festival.”
Kate narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side. “Sorry, hon, I’m not following you. Why is James Dean bad?”
Why? Becca shrugged.
“I know this sounds crazy, but there’s something about Nick that reminded me of James Dean—with a modern spin and maybe with shades of Adam Levine and biceps and tattoos.
“But more rugged, though, less metrosexual,” Becca added.
They paused for a moment of quiet appreciation, slow smiles spreading over their faces.
Actually, Becca had drawn the James Dean-Adam Levine parallel the first time she’d set eyes on Nick Ciotti. Well, actually, that’s what she’d thought the second time she’d seen him. The first time, she hadn’t really seen him. She’d been distraught over Victor’s accident and the way Rosanna was trying to ice her out. She’d needed answers. But then when he’d walked into Bentleys, that’s when she’d seen him.
